


are you feeling fearful, brother?

by 11oyd



Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Angst, Howling Commandos - Freeform, Jealous Steve, Longing, M/M, Period-Typical Homophobia, Period-Typical Racism, Pining, bucky and gabe are sleeping together but arent in love, bucky pov, this is not a very happy story
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-26
Updated: 2016-07-26
Packaged: 2018-07-26 23:34:37
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,195
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7594708
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/11oyd/pseuds/11oyd
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bucky thinks about how wrong it is, not that they’re both men but that they’re treating each other like canvases, painting onto each other different faces and different names and different gasps. </p><p>He thinks about the way Steve gasps, the way he used to have to gasp for air after running from bullies and Bucky would rub his back hard to calm him down, his palm hot with friction. Steve doesn’t gasp like that any more, doesn’t need Bucky’s palm flat on his back. Bucky pushes another finger inside against the first.</p>
            </blockquote>





	are you feeling fearful, brother?

Bucky and Jones fuck, sometimes. When the wind howls outside their tent loud enough that no one can hear anything - when one of them is lonely or one of them is a little drunk or one of them wakes up in the middle of the night whimpering. There's no real rules to it, nothing except _Don't tell anyone_ , but that's unspoken; as if they need a verbal confirmation of what will happen if anyone ever finds out.

It's not because they love each other or anything as fucking stupid as that. Why would they love each other? What do they even know about each other? Bucky knows Jones likes to spit curses real fast just as he's nearing his orgasm. He knows Jones likes to bite down on his lower lip hard and make it wet and glistening; he knows Jones arches his back when Bucky takes his cock in his mouth.

He has no idea what Jones's favorite book is or how many siblings he has or who he was before the war. No, it's not for love that they kiss hot and open against each other's mouths; not for some silly stupid romance that Bucky sometimes spreads himself wide open so he can feel Jones push into him. Bucky likes to remind Jones of this in the moment; he grits out, "I don't even fucking like you, Jones," and Jones laughs and says, "But you sure like fucking me," as he rolls his hips down and touches something down in Bucky that makes him feel alive.

That's nice - it's nice that they both know it, that they both understand nothing will ever happen beyond this animal rutting in the middle of the night in the middle of a war. It could get messy, otherwise.

Bucky's seen what emotions do to people. He's felt the hot twisting in his gut; he knows what it feels like for his lips to go numb with wanting to kiss someone he can't have. It's not worth it. He doesn't want it. Not with Gabe Jones, certainly not with anyone else. But fucking?

If it makes the nightmares die down, if it makes his stomach loosen from its knot even for a second, sure, he'll take it. He'll bite hickeys into Gabe's deep dark skin on his ribs where no one will ever see it except Bucky, his teeth razor sharp against soft warmth.

"Barnes," Jones calls him, hissing it low. "Barnes, shit, yeah. _Shit_. Fuck."

And he can't fight every Nazi in the world, and he can't stop worrying about Steve when they go on missions, and he can't stop the way his hands shake unless he's holding a rifle in his hands - but he can do this here, now, he can make Jones go blind with pleasure for just a moment, just this moment.

 

* * *

 

It started in the months they were held captive by Zola and the other scientists, trapped in tiny cages piled fifteen men deep. There's barely room to breathe, let alone move or stretch out or have a second alone. Bucky keeps himself busy thinking about imaginary futures he might have: He's a doctor; he's a businessman; he's a mechanic. He lives next door to Steve; he lives down the street from Steve; he introduces Steve to a nice girl who might actually see his worth for once.

Other time spent: Listening to Dum Dum dreamily list off food his mother could cook to perfection, watching Morita frown and try to answer riddles produced by Falsworth, attempting to understand what Jones could be saying to the French fellow. Defending Jones when other prisoners try to take his portion of food. Getting sick. Getting sicker. Finally understanding what Steve was going through all that time with the chest-rattling cough, laughing to himself, coughing because he laughed.

Those that don't get sick get beaten, and those that don't get beaten or sick get taken. The ones that get taken never come back.

Bucky thinks for sure he's going to die of the cough that's making him curl into himself from how much it shakes him, the chills that make his teeth chatter in his skull, until suddenly, abruptly, he starts getting better. And that's when the guards finally notice him. And _that's_ when he knows for sure he's going to die.

"I think they're taking me soon," he says to the closest person near him. His eyes are on the two guards watching him, one of them writing something down. "They're talking about me right now. They think I'm special for not dying of the god damn pneumonia."

"You're not that special," says the man next to him, which is Jones.

Bucky turns and looks at him.

"You're not," Jones says. "If anyone should be taken, it should probably be Morita."

"Fuck you," calls Morita across the pen, and then pauses and says, "Also, thanks, I guess."

Jones shrugs. "All you did was not die. Good fucking job."

Bucky just keeps looking at him and then his lips twitch slightly, almost smiling. "Yeah," he says. "I'm not that special." If Steve was here, they'd take him in a heartbeat. Anyone could take one look at him and think, _That's a survivor. That one knows how to survive._ He's so fucking thankful Steve isn't here. "Yeah, well I don't see them taking any second glances at you, do I?"

Jones smiles now, slow. "I heard them say they weren't going to test it out on a Negro."

Now they're just looking at each other. "Racist bastards," he finally says, and Jones's smile widens.

Later, they bring the two of them out to clean up a messy brown smear on the floor, just Bucky and Jones, and Bucky is slowly moving his mop around when Jones says, "You a Catholic?"

Bucky squints at him.

"A Catholic," Jones prompts.

"I guess," says Bucky, because Steve is. Truthfully, Bucky doesn't care much for God at this point in his life, any kind. But Steve does, and that means something.

"You go to confession?"

"Sometimes." The stain is resistant, fighting back. "When Steve gets me to go." They've all heard of Steve, they're familiar, just like he's heard of Loretta and Julie and Abigail and Sadie and Dot. Jones moves Bucky's mop out of the way with his and starts scrubbing hard, going at it like he's done it before; Bucky steps back and leans against his.

"Still think they're going to take you?" grunts Jones.

This morning, before they'd pulled them out for work, a short man with round glasses had come by and stared long and hard straight at Bucky. It had made his stomach curl something fierce; Steve wouldn't want him to be afraid, but he is. He's god damn scared out of his mind. "Yeah."

"So confess to me," Jones says.

"What?"

He pauses, drawing up to look at Bucky. "Confess. If you're going to die, and you're Catholic, tell me your sins, Barnes."

"You're not a priest."

Jones makes a show of looking around. "You see one coming our way any time soon?"

Bucky's heart does a funny little thing in his chest. "So you think I'm going to die too?"

Jones says, "Barnes."

"It's personal."

"Who am I going to tell?" asks Jones, smiling again with his white teeth stark against his dark skin. "Who's going to believe me?"

Bucky moves past him to get started on another section of dirt and dried blood and vomit, pushing the mop down into the floor as hard as he can so that the wooden handle trembles in his hand. "I'm a fucked up person, Jones," he says. "I ain't gonna go to heaven if I die, I know that. It's fine, I've accepted it. I sin all the fucking time and if there is a God, he probably doesn't like the way I curse or gamble or drink or kill. But I don't need to go to any pure white heaven where I won't fit in anyway - I just need to make sure that it's there, so that other people can go, the ones that do deserve it."

This stain is coming up easier. It bends against his force; soon it will look like it wasn't there at all. And the person that left it will be erased even further.

More quietly, his voice low and stretched taut like a rope, he says, "I love a man. I'd die for him. I'd lay myself down across burning coals for him. It's fucking ridiculous what I'd do for him. He's my brother, he's my best friend. But I wish he was…"

It's the first time he's ever said it out loud. Even when he had his mouth wrapped around another man's cock in an alleyway in Brooklyn, it didn't feel as real as this moment here and now with Jones listening behind him and the stain swishing brown and red in the mop water below him. He stops, hands clenched tight white against the handle. Steve, with his big eager eyes. Steve, who will never know how Bucky feels because Bucky's about to die in some factory under some mad scientist's hands all because he survived the flu. God damn.

He barely hears Jones say, "Me too," but when he does, he turns around, staring hard at him.

"What?" he says, his voice a crawl above a whisper. "You - you a queer, Jones?"

Jones's mouth looks mangled and red, not a smile any more but a wound. "No. I'm not in love with a man. But I've done things."

He thinks of Jones in an alleyway. "So we're both sinners."

"Yeah, Barnes," says Jones, and there's something sympathetic in his eyes that Bucky just can't look at, turning back around. "We're both sinners."

And the next day, Zola takes Bucky back to his laboratory and everything turns into a slow painful haze - he forgets he ever told Jones anything, forgets the mop and the water, forgets the words until they're in the forest walking home and Bucky's leaning heavily on Steve's arm feeling like he's been brought back to life and he makes direct eye contact with Jones through the trees. He stops laughing, straightens up and away from Steve, moving away as though a bucket of iced water has just doused him, and he remembers.

Jones lifts a hand casually and gives him a two-finger salute, and that is the moment when Bucky feels the first touch of arousal.

 

* * *

 

There's seven Commandos total, two to a tent, and since Steve is Captain, they give him his own tent by himself. Bucky hears half the team talking about it around the fire, hears Dugan say, "We can just put the two coloreds in the same one, don't you think," and steps in without thinking. "No," he says. "Jones is with me."

Steve looks surprised first and then pleased, smiling warmly at Bucky like he thinks Buck is something else. "No problem, Buck. Sounds good."

And if it makes him feel a little queasy that Steve thinks he's doing it to stick up for Jones when really he's doing it to stick it in Jones - well, that feeling goes away when Jones presses him down into the bedding, all strong hands and strong mouth. Girls are nice. Girls are soft, breathy. But Jones is. He drags it out of Bucky, demanding from him. They're soldiers together first and foremost, and fuckmates second. Never lovers.

"Come on," grits out Jones, his eyes glinting in the dark. "I don't need you to be slow with me -" and then he throws his head back as Bucky complies and pushes a finger in with just some spit and the barest amount of lube.

Yeah, he doesn't need to be careful with Jones, but it had always been a part of his imagination. Couldn't have been rough with Steve when he was in his original body - couldn't have forced him down and kissed him breathless if it set off an asthma attack. In his dreams, he'd taken it so slow with Steve, stroking him and leaning over him and breathing out soft, loving nonsense into his ear. He'd suck love marks onto his pale skin and it would last for weeks, pretty little bruises that Steve would blush about and try to hide in public. Steve would melt underneath him, needing Bucky's gentle touch, and Bucky would give it to him delicately, he would.

Jones likes it rough. He likes the marks too, but Bucky makes sure to keep them well-hidden, no playing games out here.

Leaning down, Bucky presses his finger in deeper and circles it, stretching Jones out as he licks his nipple, taut and dusky. He thinks about how wrong it is, not that they're both men but that they're treating each other like canvases, painting onto each other different faces and different names and different gasps. He thinks about the way Steve gasps, the way he used to have to gasp for air after running from bullies and Bucky would rub his back hard to calm him down, his palm hot with friction. Steve doesn't gasp like that any more, doesn't need Bucky's palm flat on his back. Bucky pushes another finger inside against the first.

"Is this good, baby?" he asks in a low voice, shifting down between Jones's legs with his mouth close to Jones's cock. "You like me doing this to you, sweetheart?"

"Fuck, Barnes, yes," say Jones.

"Call me Bucky," says Bucky and lowers his mouth onto Jones's cock, sliding down as far as he can go, almost to the base but not quite. He feels Jones's hand in his hair, tightening, and closes his eyes. Maybe he's the only one pretending. Maybe he should struggle to stay more present. And then he hears Jones sigh his name above him and then lower, even quieter, a different name that Bucky can't quite catch.

So maybe it's alright, if he's thinking of blond hair instead of black and blue eyes instead of brown.

"Bucky, Bucky," Jones chants as Bucky tightens his lips around him, and Bucky thinks, _Yes, Steve, yes, honey, let me take care of you. I'll be so good for you, sugar_.

He's pathetic. He's full of shit. He's listening to Jones come deep in his mouth and he's thinking of the way Steve smiles in the morning, sleepy and full of warmth. His mouth is full of warmth. Jones is getting sleepy under him, sated and sprawling. Bucky pulls up and then kisses Jones with anguish, so slow and soft like he always wanted.

 

* * *

 

Steve drags him aside at a bar outside of Manchester; he's supposed to be hanging around Jones, watching him getting drunker and drunker in a way that Bucky just can't seem to any more - Jones when he's drunk is loud laughter, touchy hands under the table, sly smiles. It makes Bucky laugh and duck his head, the way Jones pursues him when he's drunk. He's also supposed to be making sure no idiot tries to mess around with him for being a black soldier, which happens more than Bucky would like.

But he can't do any of that right now, because Steve's clutching his arm in his dumb too-tight super soldier grip, all in his face with worry and concern.

"Have you been avoiding me?" he repeats, like Bucky didn't hear it the first time. "Bucky?"

And it's his name that really messes with Bucky - all high-pitched at the end, trailing up into a question, _Bucky?_ He remembers Steve sick with the fever, nearly falling out of bed as he reaches blindly into the air, _Bucky?_ Lost, _Bucky?_

"Avoiding you?" Bucky says, trying to make it sound like a joke. "We live one tent away from each other, pal. I've seen you piss more times than I've eaten decent meals lately. It's a little hard to avoid someone around here, don't you think?"

Steve just looks at him, his eyebrows pulled together, low. "You don't… I mean, around the fire… I thought we were going to share a tent, Bucky."

It's been weeks since they started, and Bucky remembers the pleased smile on Steve's face when he claimed Jones.

"You're the captain," he points out. "You've got to have privileges."

"Why?" asks Steve.

"If I room with you, you might lose authority," says Bucky, although he doesn't think this is true at all. "You've gotta stand apart. Plus, if I didn't room with Jones, the others might have treated him less."

"Yeah," Steve says. "That's, yeah. But I thought. We've always roomed together, you know." He looks away and down like he's ashamed. His neck is coloring dark. Bucky wonders why he's bringing this up now, in this bar, here. "I'm glad you stuck up for him. But I'm still your number one, right?" And now he drags his gaze back to Bucky's, his smile strangled and his eyes so open and earnest that it takes everything within Bucky not to kiss him right then and there.

"Course, buddy," says Bucky, clapping his hand on Steve's shoulder. "It's me and you, always. You getting lonely at night?" He shakes Steve slightly, still gripping his shoulder. When Steve was smaller, his hand fit perfectly on his shoulder so that his thumb could touch the little dip of his collarbone. Now, it's too far.

"I liked hearing you breathe at night, back home," Steve says. "I matched mine to it when I couldn't sleep."

Bucky lets out a shuddery breath at that and rocks back on his heels, letting go of Steve. "Maybe I could alternate. Let Jones take a break from me now and then."

"You don't have to," he says. "If you don't want to." He looks like he's steeling himself for something. "Are we different now?"

"You're different," Bucky says. And even though it feels like it's being wrenched out of him, he adds, "You don't need me any more."

"Bucky," says Steve, looking astonished. "You've got my six. You're the only one - the only one that actually knows me. All the rest," he gestures to the bar around them, to England, to the war, "this is temporary. You're going to be there after this is over." And then, almost desperately, "Right? Right, Bucky?"

He closes his eyes for half a second, sees Jones sprawled out, thinks about Jones fucking him so hard he can't catch his breath, all those nights spent together and still Steve saying his name is enough to unravel him completely. It's an injustice. It's a sin to everyone, to Jones and to Steve, to Bucky especially. He's such a god damn sinner. He opens his eyes. "I'll always be there, Stevie," he says. "Always. To the end of the fuckin' line."

Steve pulls him close, hugs him right in plain sight of their fellow soldiers, and over Steve's shoulder he makes eye contact with a pair of familiar, dark eyes.

Jones smiles, lifts his hand, slowly tips him a two-finger salute like he knows. He knows, and Bucky knows, and he turns his head into Steve's straw blond hair, breathing him in deep.


End file.
